Hamilton Morris Sued, MAGA Weirdo on Shrooms, VA Mental Health Collapse Under Trump 05.20.2026

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Russell, Normie, Pace and James debut a new podcast format covering the latest developments in psychedelics, drug policy, and politics. Today, they review the latest Church of Sacred Synthesis lawsuit news, misperceptions of the "psychedelic Left", Purdue Pharma’s collapse, the Trump administration's cuts to fentanyl test strip funding, vaccine and ivermectin discourse, and worsening conditions in veterans’ mental healthcare.

Footnotes:

Michelle Lhooq — “We Have Entered the Era of Conservative Psychedelia”
https://ravenewworld.substack.com/p/we-have-entered-the-era-of-conservative

Associated Press — “OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to dissolve in opioid settlement”
https://apnews.com/article/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-criminal-sentence-settlement-b8aa94eaab3d9d8efed520f272f6d810

Vocal Politics — On Jake Lang being arrested for psychedelic mushrooms
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYNljTRjdRI/?igsh=OXpkeGVxMDQ0OGo3

The New York Times — “Trump Administration Restricts Funding for Fentanyl Test Strips”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/health/trump-fentanyl-test-strips.html

The New York Times — “FDA Delays Publication of Vaccine Safety Research”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/politics/fda-covid-vaccine-studies.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

ProPublica — “Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump”
https://www.propublica.org/article/veterans-affairs-mental-health-therapists-quit-trump

Drug Policy Alliance — Harm Reduction Form Letter
https://engage.drugpolicy.org/secure/take-action-protect-funding-treatment-overdose-prevention-lifesaving-services

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:00] Psychedelics promises to be that magic cure that fixes not only mental health, PTSD, but alcoholism, drug addiction, and a host of other things. Maybe Alzheimer's as well. It's I mean, it's a huge scandal. It's fraud is what it is. And it's fraud that is being, you know, perpetrated on a definitionally traumatized group of people. like it's promising false hope, you know, or unverified hope at best to people who do deserve good treatment. This is what the dismantling of a drug cartel looks like when it is on the above ground capitalism side of the line. If there wasn't a more perfect encapsulation of the psychedelic industry's response to these issues at hand than I've had a really long day and my head hurts, but I'll give you some platitude that kind of speaks to like, yeah, I'm not really for it.

[00:56] It's really painful to watch happen. President Trump, we support you. We support ICE. Our country was made for Americans, not for Somali. This is like a cartoon. I didn't expect kicking down. I was that was just like a jump scare for me when he showed up. I wasn't [laughter] expecting that. Hey there. Welcome to the Psymposia podcast. I'm Russell. I'm here today with my colleagues Normie, James, and Pace. Today we're kind of rolling out a new format on the podcast, more kind of a news roundup style. And this will not replace any of our deep dive single subject episodes. It's just going to allow us a lot more space to develop those and also bring our audience in on some of the stories that we want them to be familiar with, we want each other to be familiar with, and that we find generally interesting.

[01:50] The way I'm kind of viewing these episodes will be like sort of pulling back a magnifying glass. So, we'll probably be reviewing six or seven stories per episode. And the first one's going to be generally focused on where our subject matter has lied for the last decade or so on psychedelic culture, psychedelic industry, art, academia, you name it, all things psychedelic. Then we're going to pull the magnifying glass out a little bit onto the general world of drugs and medicine underground and above ground in general. And then we're going to pull it back even more broadly and look at politics that we find interesting that influence those two initial subjects or that we just generally want our audience to be familiar with as they follow us. Am I missing anything? Anybody else have thoughts on switching up the format a little bit?

[02:39] You know, I think that one of the things that this segment is doing is is bringing people who've been following us in on some of our process and making things that we are following and have been following and talking about a part of our public facing discourse. You can't be in this space and do a deep dive if you don't know what's going on right now. And we're not the sort that is going to be out there, you know, breaking every story. This is more of a an update. And I think it is important because time flies and the territory is is shifting. Pace, why do you have a magnifying glass just laying on your desk? Is that some of the old age, Sean? Well, you know, I'm trained as a scientist and you never know when you're going to need to investigate a little more closely. also a dad.

[03:31] Also a dad. Very apparent. Unbelievable. You mean you don't have a magnifying glass on your desk? I do have one, but not on my desk. And so today, I thought we'd give a quick preview of some of the stories we're going to run through as we move forward. We are going to be looking at a new church of silthoxin or a church of sacred synthesis lawsuit that's been filed. The quote unquote psychedelic left's take on right-wing people embracing psychedelics. the fate of Purdue Pharma, harm reduction funding, and veteran mental health care under Trump, and a Puerto Rican drugs for votes investigation that was mysteriously shuttered. These are some stories we've sort of built up in our group chat over the last couple of weeks and wanted to bring to our listeners.

[04:16] Great. Right. So, jumping into the psychedelic stories, the first one we got is on this sacred synthesis lawsuit that's been filed. It came up. It's two subjects that we've covered in the past couple of months. Hamilton Morris and the Church of Sacred Synthesis. Recently at a bicycle day event, Hamilton was served with papers from this Church of Silthoxin Church of Sacred Synthesis new lawsuit. I think we have video of Hamilton describing being served these papers at the Bicycle Day event that I was keeping notes very quickly about these huge things that have been happening. I was in North Carolina where a psychedelic organization called the Pearl Institute was hosting a bicycle day gathering and it was an incredibly dramatic experience where on bicycle day, one of the organizers told me as I was arriving at the venue that there were people waiting for me at the venue who were going to

[05:19] Serve me papers for a lawsuit. And I thought, man, this is happening less than 24 hours after the April 18th Oval Office meeting with Brian Huard, Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., Dr. Oz, the Jervson's, and Matt Zorn. A truly surreal collection of people. There's been quite a bit of commentary on what happened and I wish I could offer you some type of hot take. I can say that I understand why people are concerned about it. I think there is a feeling that is not without validity that anything that the Trump administration does is going to have some kind of unintended or intended negative consequences.

[06:14] The flip side is I know for a fact that there were people in the administration like Steven Miller who were directly opposing this. And I think we can all very easily imagine a scenario where a conservative Republican administration would not embrace psychedelics and the president of the United States of America would not make a joke about wanting to try Ibeane himself. It's surreal. The whole thing is beyond my abilities to rationally appraise. It's especially mindbending when I consider the possibility that I may have introduced Brian. All right. So, one thing I don't think it boggles the mind of Hamilton Morris to talk about this.

[07:02] He's specifically avoiding the topic because some of the people that he is friendly with, the Jervid since were in the room. He doesn't want to criticize it. He doesn't want to talk about something that might, you know, cause strife between or friction between him and those that he'd like to remain on good terms with. So he's I think it's also I think it's also interest like the way he has to frame it for his audience as well. You know he's kind of he's trying to like balance you know cuz I think there's probably increasingly a lot of magas that are kind of gravitating towards him. So you know what was the what did he say? is there's validity to the feeling like I just the whole framing is is kind of [expletive] Yeah.

[07:56] For just to link it back to previous reporting in our video on the executive order, we talk about the linkages between that decision and the Jervson's that we wrote about ext extensively in the psychedelic syndicate. I mean we've been covering this for years now. This is kind of the inevitable outcome of where everything, you know, has been intentionally guided for, I don't know, going back how many years now? Five, six, seven years now. So, this isn't surprising. I don't really think it's surreal. Anyone who has been It's surreal in the sense of like look at this like a bunch of [expletive] fascists embracing psychedelics. It's surreal to someone who hasn't been following it.

[08:43] Oh my god, a Republican Donald Trump is is into psychedelics or whatever. It's Yeah, I kind of get it in that sense, but it's Yeah, this is obvious the people who have been following the encroachment of like right-wing psychedelia. And in fact, Hamilton on stage like you made fun of you and intentionally took your work out of context when you pointed this out multiple years ago in right-wing in your paper rightwing psychedelia. It's a topic upon which Hamilton consistently elides. He avoids dealing with it. Now, one other thing that I think we should probably at least comment on is that Hamilton has been on quite a tear for some time talking about how Psymposia is threatening to sue him and utterly hilarious that he's served with papers and it well what do you know the thing is to anyone paying attention any anyone paying attention so the

[09:44] Church had sued us a couple years ago at this point and they sued us they put everybody on the same lawsuit, the US board, psychedelics today, the people who the authors of the paper that Fungal fiction the analysis on Hamilton Morris was initially included on that lawsuit and then he had dropped off. So, this is like kind of in a sense a continuation. Yeah, it's like a product suit this time. Like the last one was in the business and this one's over something completely different. And for what it's worth, I have heard from people who have been investigating this case a little bit that it's fairly frivolous and doesn't seem to be going anywhere obviously. But it is very funny to think of Hamilton getting served at a bicycle day event and also very funny for these Church of Silthoxin sacred synthesis people to picture them like sort of huddling around the event like getting ready to serve them cuz they're a pretty silly bunch of dudes as well.

[10:42] Also, it's just and this lawsuit. And this lawsuit is also for $500 million, I think. Again, they really did that 500 million. They know their number. Unbelievable. Check out episode two of our Hamilton's Pharmarmacoupe series for a lot more detail on all of this history. If you haven't seen it yet, we go into pretty in-depth detail on all of this. Was there more in that clip? Yeah, we still had some time left. We want to go back to Yeah, I think where it cut off, he was talking about how it's fairly surreal that he might have introduced Brian Hubard to Joe Rogan. I think Brian Huard being the right-wing Iba Gain guy. So, yeah, if we want to wrap that up here, also somebody we wrote about in the psychedelic syndicate. All right. Especially mindbending when I consider the possibility that I may have introduced Brian Huard to Joe Rogan after he appeared on this podcast.

[11:35] I mean, I did make an introduction. I'm sure Brian Hubard in his bottomless charisma would have been able to finagle that appearance on his own, but it's amazing to see how a Joe Rogan appearance turns into a Joe Rogan text message to the president, which then turns into a presidential order to accelerate medical treatments for serious mental illnesses that will allocate $50 million to develop psychedelic therapies and prioritize psychedelic drugs that have received breakthrough therapy designation by the FDA. I don't know exactly how much this will change things, right? This is happening very close to the finish line when it comes to Compass and Eona, right?

[12:24] They're already at a point where the expected approval of psilocybin is maybe less than one year away. So in some sense it seems that much of the heavy lifting had already been done and yet I can't imagine that this will slow things down and on top of that it will almost certainly serve to accelerate the development of other therapies like methylone. After leaving the Oval Office, Brian Huard came to North Carolina for the same bicycle day event and gave a very moving speech where he said in essence that he believes this is the end of psychedelic prohibition that doesn't quite seem supported by the order, but also I wasn't in the Oval Office while this was happening.

[13:19] And I'm sure there are unspoken dimensions of this that have yet to trickle into the public understanding and to declare. All right. So, it's obviously not the end of psychedelic prohibition. I don't know why he's not clear about that. It's going to just bifurcate scheduling if anything is approved. Essentially that means that there will be it'll be legal for if you are prescribed if you are doing it on your own. There's no like decriminalization component of that. That's what would have happened with MDMA. So that's never going to happen. Obviously the companies want to keep it for themselves. So they get protection of the law. You don't get protection of the law. That's what's going to happen in any of these if any anything goes through here all like the executive order it's just going to apply and like when assignment is approved so compass and US should get approval I do think that that's going to go through

[14:22] That that has no bearing on your ability to possess and cultivate mushrooms you're totally excluded from that unless you have specific legal protections in your state and the fed is going to, you know, generally not interfere just like it is with cannabis. It'll be a similar It'll be a very similar thing. For example, marinol, which is, you know, THC in pill form that was approved in 1992. Yeah. Have you ever done marinol paste? Yeah, allegedly. [laughter] I mean, who knows? It's the black market, you know, but yeah, it looked convincing. Real quick as well, Mr. Hamilton did put in there, you know, just for the record, that he may have mind-bogglingly put tipped the domino that maybe ended psychedelic prohibition if we're to believe these accounts.

[15:17] So may maybe Yeah, just covering all his bases. This might suck that Trump is involved, but also I might have helped end prohibition. Every success is probably because of something I did, but if it's a failure, I had no part of it. Right. Yes. I think one of the big things with the executive order is that there's a matching federal amount of money that they would So if the state I think in the case of Texas, Texas put forth $50 million and then they kind of opened that to other companies coming in. No company took them up on that. And so it seems like that was then rolled into this executive order where if Texas puts forth $50 million then the feds will come in. So I think that's the play here in the various states.

[16:07] They don't want to the psychedelic sort of industry. There's a lot of high failure rate a lot of wasted money here. So you know let the taxpayer pick up that bill. I think there's some benefits of having federal money and taking the ball away from the philanthropists who have largely funded the space and those biases, those desires sort of also become manifested in the field. really think that I think that adding a federal component with some federal oversight theoretically could be better moving forward, but obviously everything in the Trump administration, everything they touch turns to [expletive] And so I think the everybody should be totally skeptical of them touching any anything in this space.

[16:57] And for instance, with the whole Ibug gain thing is already causing issues in Gabon. Yep. I've talked to some people on this. The dynamics there are people are very concerned about how that's going to affect the agriculture and the market dynamics there already. So that is something for people to keep an eye on how this develops. Yeah. And the focus on Ibagane actually comes up in our next article that I wanted to look at which is from Michelle look who is a who's an author behind the rave new world substack. She put out an article very much in line with a lot of pieces that came out around the Trump executive order, which is like, "Holy crap, the rightwing's interested in psychedelics."

[17:43] As if that hasn't been happening for some time. And so, she had been covering a conference, I believe, that happened in Austin, and some of that made it into this reporting that she did in an article called We Have Entered the Era of Conservative Psychedelia. James, if you want to pull up the second screenshot. We can skip the first one. It just sort of the first screenshot I had was just of Governor Perry from that conference saying that the focus on veterans is because veterans are a very sellable population to go to the legislature with. And so it just sort of supports a lot of reporting that we've put out before. But related to Ibagane, Brian Huard was there discussing Ibagane. And there's sort of this new star of the Republican psychedelic wing of advocacy for psychedelics and it's ibagane.

[18:34] And this like psychedelic alpha had al also reported is sort of one of the reasons that a lot of people think they're shifting towards ibagane as a focus. And so unlike MDMA or mushrooms, no one's ever going to hear about an ibagane rave as Hubard likes to say. Hubard also often recounts how his experience on the drug was brutal and not something he's eager to do again. There's this easy pivot towards Ibagain for the Christian rightwing who don't like to stress the rave party ecstasy elements of psychedelia but are interested in this hard road to savior this hard road to healing. I have some thoughts because you know I gain is tabernoga.

[19:21] It's a you know western African understory shrub. It's used by an evangelical syncratist religion called bui. Bui has quite the ceremony that uses ibo gain in both initiatory and other lower dose settings. And there's a lot of dancing. There's a lot of costumes. There's fire. There's face paint. Sounds like somebody doesn't like electronic music because all of the elements of like a rave are there. And people like Hubard and these evangelicals like you know they're not on board yet. We're not there yet.

[20:06] But there was a talk that Nish and I gave at Wisconsin on right-wing psychedelia, our paper on the topic, where we ended it saying, you know, there's no barrier to a psychedelic prosperity gospel, a psychedelic megaurch on, you know, pharmacological basis. It's not like the evangelical movement in the United States is oil to psychedelia's water. They're just historical reasons why they've been kept separate. And what we're witnessing right now, especially with Trump, who is, if anything, a cult leader, you know, we're seeing the blessing at a very, very high level of this as a potential future. And that's probably what's got Hubard so jazzed, not so much the, you know, nittygritty policy stuff.

[20:55] That's details they'll work out later, right? You got to get your doctrine straight first. But go ahead and Google bui ceremony or ibo gain ceremony West Africa and you'll see what I'm saying about the pomp and circumstance and the dancing involved. Yeah, I think it's so interesting about I'm kind of looking at this executive order and obviously Trump knows nothing about any of this. He's like totally clueless on psychedelic world. But I think it's a interesting little microcosm of how business is done in this administration. It's sort of all the people around them doing whatever the [expletive] they want. Trump obviously there's been a lot of speculation on this.

[21:42] Rogan was veering away from Trump trying to balance his audience's interests. you know, he's been kind of [expletive] on him a little bit recently with immigration, with Iran war. And so far, Trump hasn't gone after Rogan like he has gone after Alex Jones, Candace Owens, whoever else recently. Tucker Carlson, he's totally gone after them. He hasn't gone after Rogan. This kind of brought them back together a little bit. Who knows how long that that lasts. So I think generally yeah, Trump gains from this. That's the thing that that's the kind of capital he extracted from the situation.

[22:30] Y totally. And the those are sort of like the 101 points of every psychedelic right-wing article that's come out since the executive order. You've got Hubard, you've got Perry, you've got Rogan, all these mainstay figures that are influencing kind of the right wing. And in the look article from Rave New World, we had been discussing some of the latter quotes of what she describes as the quote unquote psychedelic left-wing. And I thought we could look at a couple of those. What she says is that while none of the leftists I've spoken to over the last few months have advocated for denying veterans psychedelic care, in fact, many are actively involved in veteran groups, the increasing militarization of psychedelics is an issue that few seem to have a coherent stance on.

[23:18] Most are choosing to have a wait andsee approach around what comes next, which sort of made me question what leftist psychedelia people she's talking to or just sort of This is an instance of her being We've been covering this for years. When we covered it, it was very early. It was kind of volatile. There was, if she were to cover it at that time, she might not be invited to the party. She might lose some access. She's kind of, you know, walking on glass a little bit. But when it comes more into the mainstream now with just o openly Trump being involved in it, then it gives her a sense of safety. Then she can comment on this like, oh, this is a new thing. You know, this is how so much of our work has act.

[24:04] This is like a familiar experience for us where we cover something that's kind of sort of unpopular in the psychedelic space. it becomes sort of our analysis has been sort of accepted to some degree and then it's safe for the you know the kind of fence sitting journalists or commentators in the space to then comment on it. This happens over and over again. This is also what was the other thing recently that this is oh you know there's been some comments recently about us and our criticism lyos's phase three and now resilient the new leadership seems to be very uncomfortable with some of the existing therapists that were in maps it's the same thing and now that's okay to talk about for commentators and oh loose you know the therapists were kind of [expletive] weird And so I don't it's really cheap journalism.

[25:02] Leftists are frequently early. We have a critique of capitalism that has explanatory value. It helps us understand the world better. And there's something that's parallel in this erasure of Psymposia. P who shall not be named is that in the United States we talk about the left and it depends on who you're talking to and what they mean because a lot of people understand the left to be like Democrats or maybe Cy Booker popped into my mind and her view of the left is crystallized in the next two quotes I have. So, if we want to cut to the next one, which describes a protest that happened during the conference and Izzy Ali, the new executive director was on as well of MAPS, co-executive director of MAPS was on stage with Rick Doblin.

[26:02] And you mentioned the P that should not be named in us pace. There's a G that was not named here. So I'll just read this quote. At a closing panel that featured leadership Rick Dolin, Ismael Ali, and Betty Aldworth from MAPS, a small group of protesters disrupted the conversation to question MAPS's ongoing work in Israel, where researchers have been conducting group MDMA assisted psychotherapy for survivors of the Hamas attacks as well as IDF veterans with PTSD. I was not at the conference, but I've watched a video clip of the incident, and news of the disruption trickled its way to me via friends who were present. The TLDDR they said was that the protesters were trying to get Dolin to denounce what's happening in Gaza as a genocide. Doin refused to use the G-word, but Ali, a Muslim American who took over as co-executive director of MAPS last year, stepped forward and did use the term while the audience erupted into applause.

[26:58] There's a consistent want to frame protests like this, especially at MAPS conferences as there was a disruption and maps handled it so well. And the that happened at psychedelic science, I think 2023 when they were disrupted by indigenous protesters and Rick was like, "Well, come on stage for five minutes and say what you want to say or whatever." How about this? If I give you one minute to say what you want to say, then let me speak. [applause] or Izzy being willing to just say genocide on stage and getting like standing ovation like great and then they continue to just do the work that they were being criticized for and Rick Rick not saying it.

[27:47] You see, there's something for everybody. It's a really big tent. you know, people who think things are a genocide in Gaza and acknowledge reality that is been put forth by international human rights organizations and the UN. And then, you know, people who are very friendly with the IDF and would like things to go forward in terms of clinical trials and government funding and all the rest. You certainly don't want to cut off the, you know, potential profits to be made in contracts through Israel with the IDF moving forward. Seems like there's going to be quite a lot of business there. Yeah. And if you look back far enough, what I reported in my truth dig reporting on MAPS's military first strategy, the IDF and Israel were the first military that they had worked with and like had a big I think I believe they gave funding to an former IDF

[28:49] Psychiatrist psychologist and was working have been working with IDF for decades. If we want to pull up the last quote I have from this article, I think it goes right in line with what we've been talking about. And again, further crystallizes this kind of silly view of what the psychedelic left is. So Michelle writes, I'm just going to read the paragraph here. Yet even though MAPS released its own statement applauding the federal action by Trump, Ali's comments at the Shakruna conference were more candid. Responding to protesters, he said that Doblin he and Doblin have spent years debating with each other about what happens when psychedelic therapists work with active duty soldiers. Are they just making it okay to go back to war? One of the insights from the studies, he noted, is that many veterans who go through psychedelic healing realize they were going to war on behalf of a system that never really cared about them.

[29:40] Quote, "That doesn't mean they all become peacenicks," he said, "but a lot of them do." And so he's pitching this Trojan horse idea. He goes on, Ali then spoke to the predicament that he and the leftist movement's leadership are facing. He being grouped in with the leftist movement leadership. Quote, "When you're trying to appeal to the worst people in the world, it's really important that you don't tell them that people who commit violence regret it after taking psychedelics." He said, "If we're really trying to change culture with psychedelic science, it's really giving a master's tools master's house." However, when I pressed him further on where these recent developments leave the psychedelic left, Ali deferred. He'd been having a long day full of interviews, and admittedly, my brain was starting to hurt, too.

[30:27] Instead, he left me with an open-ended question. "We've appealed to the worst people in the world," he said. "Congratulations. We've succeeded. Is that really what success is? And I just think if there wasn't a more perfect encapsulation of the psychedelic industry's response to these issues at hand than I've had a really long day and my head hurts, but I'll give you some platitude that kind of speaks to like, yeah, I'm not really for it. But also just I'm tired and I can't really keep talking. It's really painful to watch happen. It's re it's like watching them I don't even know. It's just really painful to see. Well, it's giving the if Kamla or Hillary was elected, we'd be having brunch right now vibes. You know, the thing about this quote is it points out another truism about, you know, the left and an analysis that is critical of capital is that it's frequently early.

[31:23] And this idea, congratulations, we've succeeded. We were saying this years ago like what happens when you catch this car? They have caught the car and Donald Trump is now the you know the face of psychedelics along with Joe Rogan. Something that you know we troubled long ago as hey is this really where you want to go with this? You know, but one other thing to unpack here is is the sort of open what is it? Subtrifuge that Izzy cops to here, you know? Yeah. Oh, you don't want to tell them that these drugs secretly often can turn your soldiers into peace.

[32:10] Like what a fantasy that they're telling, you know, to themselves, to their supporters. And they're wrong. Like these drugs are not going to end war. They're not. Yeah. And to that point, a perfect transition into our next story from sort of what the psychedelic left is saying about things to what the psychedelic right is actually doing. And I kind of think this is a segment we should like continue as we do these news roundups, which is like if anybody out there knows how to make like good stingers or like transition music or something, this would be a fun one to have. but like a psychedelic right-wing watch because there's always these consistent stories that are coming up that illustrate the points that come up in Pace you and Nehe's paper right-wing psychedelia which is that psychedelics themselves are not just going to make you some left-wing peace nick regardless of what people like Izzy want you to think or whatever.

[33:07] So the next one we have is on Jake Lang. Jake Lang is a right-wing influencer. He was pardoned for charges related to the January 6th Capitol attack. He's promoted book burning protests in Michigan, suggesting burning LGBTQ books and Islamic and Hindu books. More recently, he was arrested for destroying a sculpture on the front steps of the Capitol in, I believe, Minnesota and facing felony charges for first-degree damage to property. I think we have a video of that if you want to rier faces new charges for damaging an anti- ice sculpture outside Minnesota's capital building. Here's what that sculpture looked like before a group of veterans revealed it early yesterday in protest of federal immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota.

[33:54] Later, faright influencer Jake Lang posted a video online showing him kicking down letters to change the message. President Trump, we support you. We support ICE. Our country was made for Americans, not for Somali. This is like a cartoon. I didn't expect kicking down letters to turn prosecute ICE into pro-ICE. The group that [laughter] had like I'm trying to parse this in my mind. So, this is like an anti- anti- ice sculpture. I can't do it. Like, it's an anti- ice sculpture. He's anti that anyhow. He wanted to turn the anti- ice eye sculpture into a pro ice sculpture.

[34:39] No. Well, that now you're just doing the calculation. I was just trying to draw it out. And that [laughter] that did she say at the beginning of that that sculpture was created by veterans, too? I do think that it was veterans. Can we play it back? Yeah, that's what I heard. Yeah. January 6th rier faces new charges for damaging an anti- ice sculpture outside Minnesota's capital building. Here's what that sculpture looked like before a group of veterans revealed it early yesterday in protest of federal immigration. Then this [expletive] clown shows up in his own uniform [laughter] and like oh man I was that was just like a jump scare for me when he showed up. I wasn't expecting [laughter] that. Now the dude is always in uniform if we want as the second video I have that sort of introduces him is him at a protest in Minnesota around ICE as well.

[35:29] He showed up We don't have to watch the whole thing, but basically he showed up thinking he would have support on his side, showing up to these protests around ICE and basically became a one-man army against a group of enraged citizens. It was just a funny one to see. But yeah, we are talking about him for a reason though. If you want to pull up the third image I have there, which is some recent reporting from a group called Vocal Politics. He was after being arrested for the pro-Ice sculpture. He was then arrested again. Yeah, the anti-ant that he was anti Yeah. Yeah. So, they report far-right Islamophobic influencer Jake Lang was pulled over and arrested just moments before his arrival at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, where he had planned to burn Karans, according to journalist Ford Fischer.

[36:22] Police appeared to attribute the initial pulling over to texting while driving, but Lang also spoke to Fischer on the phone and confirmed that he was indeed arrested earlier that day by Daggerborn police and charged with the possession of psychedelic mushrooms. He said he was also cited for texting while driving and the U-Haul was taken because he was driving while the passenger was the serer. So, this dude was also arrested for psychedelic mushrooms. Not a lot else to say. There's not a whole lot of reporting on it, but I just think that's always notable. As a Michigander, I do have to say that that police officer saved his life if he was driving to Dearborn to do a Kuran burning. Like, that was not going to go well. That's going to be way worse than his anti- ice sculpture. Yeah. Anybody else have anything to say on Jake Lang?

[37:08] I just sort of wanted to bring him into the zeitgeist here as just an example of farright dude with psychedelic mushrooms. I imagine he's not going to be here very long. you know, his appeal to Donald Trump as he does, you know, this action is is actually very indicative of the time that we're in where people are directly communicating with a camera trying to grab headlines so that they can get a free pass from Donald Trump. And you know, at J6, that's exactly what was given. It's on offer. It's a way to do a job interview for Donald Trump. And it's a very weird time that we're living in, you know, and I guess that's the thing that I note from all of this.

[37:57] But the fact that he has psychedelic mushrooms, like he's a part of the hype, you know. Congrats, Izzy. Y'all were successful in turning psychedelics into a bipartisan pastime. This was the strategy, too. Yeah. This is what it looks like. That was exactly the strategy. This was the kind of the bargain that maps and that part of the psychedelic space made to mainstream psychedelics. That's exactly what it looks like. And sort of with a kind of cultural blessing now that through the executive order, I don't know about you guys, but I sort of associate psychedelics kind of with the sort of MAGA kind of cultural.

[38:45] It's definitely in the counter revolution. It's sort of I kind of attribute it to that at this point. Well, I would say that, you know, and this is where people get confused because people don't understand that MAGA is a foot soldier of the lumpin proletariat kind of strategy of billionaires. you know, as we record this, he's probably on his way back, you know, but you know, Trump and with a, you know, a posi of dozens of the most wealthy people on the planet, billionaires went to China to make a deal. You know, America is not an empire or a country. It's like 500 multinational corporations in a trench coat.

[39:31] So the right wing is a highly hierarchical you know organizational focus where dear leader is unquestioned. It's patriarchal. Look at the organization chart of any Fortune 500 company. Go look and see, you know, who the CEO of the company that you work for is. And you're looking at a patriarchal right-wing movement. and they funded MAGA. They are the people emiserating the population and they made MAGA because anytime the word socialism becomes, you know, not a curse word, they bring out the shock troops. Like I don't know if they made it.

[40:17] I might disagree with you when they made it, but they certainly hitched their wagon to it. But they are absolutely on board. There's not a single, you know, tech CEO who didn't show up, you know, of note, who didn't show up at the inauguration. You know, this is not a deal breakaker. They are very on board with what tax cuts or everything else. I don't know if you caught, but this the settlement this 10 billion settlement between Trump suing the government and now DOJ is in charge of handling that settlement. They've transitioned from $10 billion settlement to $1.7 billion slush fund which will then go to pay legal expenses of all the J6 riders and you know various people like Michael Flynn.

[41:07] So they're literally paying the shock troops at this point, right? And DOJ is what? Headed by somebody who is Trump's personal lawyer. Yeah, Trump's personal lawyer. Is he second in command? Now I have to look. He's acting. Blanch is acting. There we go. Yeah, on the note of settlements, the next story we had sort of pulling the magnifying glass out to more on just generally medicine and drugs in general. Thank you, Pace. Good magnifying cut. The one I wanted to briefly touch on, this is a bit of an older story, but I think it's important for us to discuss kind of in our wheelhouse and I wanted to bring it into the conversation here, which is that Oxycottton maker Purdue Pharma is dissolving. So I wanted to discuss just first what came up during the trials of Purdue Pharma.

[41:52] There were some important things that came up during that trial that I just wanted to stress sort of the specifics of then look at where the settlement money from that is going and where Purdue Pharma is going to end up essentially. So during the Purdue Pharma trial, it came up that just as a refresher, the Connecticut, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company admitted it did not have an effective program to keep its powerful prescription painkillers from being diverted to the black market, even though it told the US Drug Enforcement Agency that it did. It also admitted that it paid doctors through a speakers program to prescribe the drugs and paid an electric medical records company to send doctors information on patients that encouraged more opioid prescriptions. So that's just a quick overview of some of the things that came up during this trial.

[42:39] The next thing I wanted to discuss is where the money is actually going from some of these settlements was I found it sort of surprising how little is going to actual individuals versus the other sort of avenues it's going to. So yeah, the settlement calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to $7 billion over 15 years. Most of the money is to go to government entities to use to fight the opioid crisis. I wanted to stress this because in our neck of the woods that is often like these opioid settlement funds that are trying to be co-opted by the psychedelic movement to fund like Ivagane research and stuff like that instead of I don't know what I've talked about before housing food harm reduction supplies anything like that maybe some of it's going towards that but they're trying to divert millions from these funds to public research into psychedelics that will likely eventually be converted into private company patents and things like that.

[43:38] I saw that the I think it was in that AP article that the average person might receive 8 to $16,000 if they could even prove that they were affected in any way. The thing what I was thinking when I was reading this story is like this is what the dismantling of a drug cartel looks like when it is on the above ground capitalism side of the line. So if you look at like sort of all drug commerce, you have the above ground which is the pharmaceutical companies, right? We're still selling drugs. You have the below ground which is the you know various transnational cartels. It's all capitalism. The cartels are more raw form of capitalism with generally without legal protections.

[44:24] But this is what it looks like when you're part of the system. You no one goes to jail. You just have to sort of disperse the you know the capital to you know certain constituencies make everybody happy and what it what is the found guilty of criminal offenses but like no one goes to jail the company is found like what [expletive] [expletive] is limited liability corporations and ultimately it's the two-tiered system of justice that we have in the United States. If you're rich, then laws don't really apply to you, but you sometimes have to show up to get deposed or whatever. You have to pay more in your lawyer, you know, team. But since Russ mentioned our neck of the woods, you know, Ohio and one of these opiate settlements, you know, how it plays out, you know, it's like why are we having a settlement here?

[45:17] Oh, yeah. Because we caused an opioid epidemic by, you know, pushing pill mills, dealing oxycottton, pills like Skittles everywhere and in particular rust belt places where, you know, sort of the economic prospects are bleak. you have a bunch of people who, you know, either previously or still involved in some kind of physical labor, whether it's mining in West Virginia or manufacturer, and they've got, you know, they've got a need for pain management. And so then you create these addicts, they become addicted, and then we saw that that was bad. There was, you know, at one point in time 100,000 overdose deaths in this country until we started changing some of our policies.

[46:05] And, you know, these settlements are a reflection of that human suffering, you know, on every state in the nation has this the impact of the decisions that this corporation made. And in Ohio, there was a $158 million that was allocated for, you know, restitution, right? But, you know, as Normie was saying, you know, dismantling of a, you know, cartel and in the really existing capitalism that that we have that has a two-tiered system of justice for rich people and power players and insiders and, you know, one that really treats the working class as disposable, expendables, people that, you know, they're consumers at best, right?

[46:52] Well, 158 million goes to this as a settlement as a slush fund. And you know, over in Kentucky or Texas or somewhere else, they're, you know, trying to the IBO game people that, oh, we should use that. We we'll use that for R&D and we'll actually fix the opioid crisis or it's given to a government entity. Well, in Ohio, according to WOSU, which is, you know, public news here, half of those funds are completely untraceable. you know, it's an opaque process. So, you know, it's like the money is allocated. It's squeezed from the stone of a corporate entity and then what happens? Well, it gets passed off to some other unaccountable power brokers who said, "Well, I would like that now. Thanks."

[47:37] Well, and also like a lot of the money that they give to organizations that are kind of like for the visibility of them helping with the problems they've caused are actually just propping up like the already proven ineffective like rehabilitation facilities and stuff that we've made for these. And you know, like I have I've had interviews for like harm reduction jobs where part of their money came from grants and they told me that like because I smoke weed in a state where weed is legal, I couldn't do it because I'm not an active recovery. And so there's like all these kind of like problematic viewpoints that still go into these like organizations that they do decide to send money to, which it's they're making it seem like they're fighting the problem, but they're actually just contributing to it a lot of times.

[48:28] Yeah. And so in conclusion, if you want to pull up the last image I have there for the Purdue stuff, I think this is just like the addendum on what's actually happening to Purdue. Like we mentioned, no individuals are being prosecuted or having penalties really beyond having to pay some money. What's actually happening with Purdue is that as part of the settlement, Purdue itself will cease to exist and be replaced by a new company, Canoa Pharma, with a board appointed by the state and an aim of combating the opioid crisis. Millions of internal Purdue documents are also going to be made public. The members of the Sackler family have also agreed not to object if their names are taken off museums and other institutions they've supported. Do you know if this is going to be sort of like the clearing house company that gets the direct money at all or is this just some nonsense public relations kind of cover?

[49:24] It's a good question if that's the last line in the article I was reading from the AP, but I'm curious what that company will end up looking like or what it'll be. Right. I mean if their mission if their business is to combat the public benefit corporation now if that's the case then one might imagine that they might contract with some of these government entities receiving some of these funds to you know to actually implement those government programs since we are all about public private partnerships in the United States. I don't know want to be conspiratorial but it certainly does seem like in the realm of possibility. So, Canoa, definitely pay attention to that one. Yeah, Google AI says Canoa Pharma is a public health focused pharmaceutical company.

[50:10] Unbelievable. It's already got it. It's 100 It says it's 100% owned by the nonprofit Canoa Foundation is dedicated to providing millions of doses of opioid addiction treatments and overdose reversal medications at no profit. I mean, and I'm fine if you're going to I mean, overdose reversal stuff is much needed. And if they're going to I'm sure you're being too charitable here. There's going to be there's going to be some sort of corruption and rot involved in this. Some like continuing the griff extending the grift in some way. We'll see. We'll follow it. Well, we've talked so we've talked a lot about now the harm reduction funding. They're going to claim to be providing no cost overdose reversal agents and whatever. That does lead us directly into our next story, which is about the Trump admin slashing funding for fentanyl testing.

[50:58] If you want to pull up the first image I have there, at the end of April, the Trump admin announced it would be restricting federal funds from purchasing fentinel and drug testing strips. They say that the government would no longer pay for the strips because they are quote intended for use by people using drugs. just seems incredibly hypocritical for an organization that is signing executive orders to prop up ibagane as some miracle treatment for substance abuse and mental health and all of this stuff to be cutting funding for fentanyl test strips which directly help people who use drugs from killing themselves and overdosing. My guess there is it's just some sort of cut the grants off so one of our companies can step in and pick up that contract.

[51:45] That's an interesting thought. Yeah, I could definitely see that happening. Pass it all on to Canoa or whatever. [laughter] Yeah, some something like that. How do we like cleave off, you know, some sort of public health related thing? Privatize that so someone connected to our network can profit there. Yeah. And there has been some push back to this decision from 11 senators who wrote a letter to RFK Jr. They had concerns asking Yeah, they did. Asking him to reverse this decision and they called out the hypocrisy here, saying that they're that test strips are a proven key tool to fight against opioid overdoses and deaths. They also note that less than 5 months ago, Donald Trump signed the Support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2025 into law with strong bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate.

[52:37] Section 113 of this law expressly provides that federal grant funding for state and tribal response to opioid use disorders may be used to quote facilitate access to products used to prevent overdose deaths by detecting the presence of one or more substances such as fentanyl and xylazine test strips. Despite this, you have chosen to remove this key support without warning. I mean, this is all in line with everything that this administration does in any issue involving public health. Yeah. You know, maybe the reason why they're, you know, getting rid of the fentanyl testing strips is that it's all fentanyl now. It's not heroin. That's a I kid. I kid. And there but there is some truth to it. And in fact, there's fentanyl has really like supplanted heroin in the United States market. like this is borne out by seizures.

[53:31] The drug seizures at the border, the rates of heroin seizures at the border are just dropping or plummeting. Yeah. And but even to that point, these strips are really important for people who are using opioids, but also other drugs, too. Like if you're testing your MDMA, your ketamine, your cocaine, whatever, they're finding fentanyl in these things. And that's an important tool in being able to educate yourself and maintain your own safety if you're using these drugs, right? And despite, you know, the decline in heroin, if you are a heroin user, chances are you probably like are a heroin user because that's your preferred opiate and you'd probably like to keep it that way. I've talked to people who would say like, I would kill to find heroin. like I have to do fentanyl cuz it's the only option left.

[54:23] And the reason that became the case was because of how hard it was to get fentanyl test strips. It became impossible to really trust like a heroin supplier without being able to easily test what you were getting from them. And like something like this just it always just feels like our government just being overly horny for consequences. Like they just love people suffering because they're living a life that's like different from theirs. You know, it's I think of it the same thing as like I saw a guy nod off and drive into a telephone pole once and this [expletive] dick, pardon my language, came running up and the first thing he said was, "What are you on, buddy?" And I was like, is that really what's important right now?

[55:09] Like you just really want to like, you know, feel all jolly cuz someone else is living a life you've decided is bad and they suffered a consequence. Like I don't know. This just this stuff just pisses me off so much. I saw someone responding to this story saying that this administration is full of like reactionary policy to crisis. Like so you see all the antiback stuff after COVID. You see all of the anti-drug user safety techniques being that these techniques are being demonized. These products are being demonized after an opioid epidemic. Like it's all like reactionary policym after people have already started dealing with a crisis. Yep. And yeah, just going and rolling back the few public health laws that reduced that number is just the sort of thing that the Trump administration loves to do.

[56:04] Yeah. And we can't say how many it's prevented, but we can say how many it's caused. It's caused zero. So [laughter] like that's another thing, too. Like why are we Great point. I think it's something like a dollar a strip as well when they're ordering. It's like not some crazy expense. Yeah. I would just love to know what the actual reasoning going into it. Is it just a completely reactionary thing that we're supposed to be focused on that, you know, some sort of, you know, the right-wing evangelical totally prohibitionist part of MAGA is just so opposed to this. Or I again I think more likely is that this is a potential business opportunity for you know some Trump connected entity to profit off this. That's where multiple categories at once.

[56:52] Yeah. This general it fits a narrative that the Amaga people want to see and it could be it's also just in alignment with the you know the chaos of internal contradictions. But again, I think if you approach Maha as it's an authentic thing, you're going to be very confused about it. Whereas the real point of MA is a screen is, you know, a facade for every corporation, the Trump administration to sell to MAGA that this is all about health when really it's about look at Maha while we're allowing, you know, Roundup to just to go crazy, all the other [expletive] [expletive] yeah, and to the to that point, we've got some confusing maja policy to discuss next.

[57:40] And before I kind of move on to that next story, I did just want to plug a little call to action here. If the harm reduction funding and the harm reduction supply access is an important cause to you, and this is all very disturbing, the Drug Policy Alliance does have like a really easy to fill out form letter on their website. I'll put a link to that on screen. I'll put a link to that in our show notes that you can send to your representatives. It covers the test strips. It covers other overdose access supplies that are being targeted and things like that. So, if you want, that's a really easy way to at least fill something out, send that to your representative, get that in their mailbox. Something along those lines. But the to the confusing Maha policy, the next thing I wanted to discuss was just sort of the overall millu of what policy and messaging from maja looks like right now as things like hav virus is trending.

[58:34] I wanted to bring in a conversation from a doctor on a podcast that I listen to called saw bones. She gave kind of a brief like I cut like a minute here, sped it up a little bit just so we could listen to I think a pretty reasonable breakdown of should we be terrified about the haunt virus? How is it interacting with Trump's policies and things like that? I think she gives a pretty sober look at that. If we want to play that really quick, this isn't co by any stretch because as we've talked about it is much harder to catch. I will say there's two pieces to this. The World Health Organization has been all over it and has been responding I would say pretty quickly. So the US while the individuals that we know are here are being monitored appropriately and we have no reason to believe that anything is being done wrong. Our response has been slow. Why? Well because if you remember we withdrew from the World Health Organization officially as of I believe it was like January 22nd of this year.

[59:24] So we are no longer a member of the World Health Organization because our president is an idiot. And what that means is that our CDC is not going to get alerts from the World Health Organization as quickly as the health organizations in all of these other countries. Yeah. We also know that there were 10 research centers in the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases who that were terminated last year. One of those centers was studying the Andes virus specifically because we knew it could be spread from person to person, but we didn't know exactly how or how easily or what to do about that. So, we were going to be studying this in Argentina, but we didn't. I and I'm not suggesting that if we had been, we would have prevented this. Probably not. Statistically not. However, we might understand what's happening a little better and how to move forward better. And the president says we have a lot of people, a lot of great people are studying it.

[1:00:11] It should be fine. We hope. I think that the when they asked the World Health Organization director general for comment, his comment was viruses don't care about our politics. They don't care about our borders and they don't care about all the excuses that we may have, which is like a I think a scarier and more realistic response than it will be fine. We hope. The truth is this should not terrify you. you should not be panicking in part because that's never a really helpful response, right? But in part because this isn't CO. We have no reason and there are many infectious disease specialists who very level-headed, you know, evidence-based are saying, "Don't panic. This is not CO." So, I just think that's like a nice brief overview of one, it shouldn't necessarily be panicking you unless you were in direct contact with people who have had this virus and been confirmed or whatever, but also the general outlook on on what our situation is with the WHO right now that we cut this funding to people who were actually directly studying this virus that's now in the news.

[1:01:12] It's just like a disturbing situation to be in right now. And at the same time, just a little bit more on that perspective, it's happening at the same time as the FDA is blocking research into the safety of shingles and the COVID vaccine. I think it just it's another perspective to be aware of as viruses are trending in the news. They are blocking these studies showing that. The BMJ wrote, "Officials from the US Food and Drug Administration have blocked the publication of several studies of CO 19 and shingles vaccinations conducted by the AY's own scientists. Each blocked study showed the safety of widespread use of vaccines for both conditions. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed the move, first reported by the New York Times.

[1:01:57] FDA scientists conducted the studies in which they analyzed millions of patient records with the help of a data firm and millions of taxpayer dollars. Two CO 19 vaccine studies were accepted for publication by medical journals. But in October 2025, the authors were told to withdraw them. In February 2026, top FDA officials did not sign off two studies of Shingris, a shingles vaccine. The abstracts required approval for submission to a conference on drug safety. There is a concerted effort and it's a multigenerational effort at this point on the right to convince the public that the government doesn't work. It cannot improve your material conditions. It can't protect you. And this is you know a convenient strategy mainly because you know if government doesn't work then oh you know the government officials who are elected or appointed they are certainly feeling less pressure from the public to you know do anything in a crisis.

[1:02:56] But it's also by design. I mean, the primary way that the government, you know, doesn't work in our country is through sabotage and arson and wrecking. You know, we saw that with Doge, like it's a feature. It's not a bug. And, you know, this is something that, you know, goes very well with, you know, Maha and such and at least on the health level is that if you get rid of public health, well, then, you know, it's not like they don't want to be healthy. They just want to, you know, pay for their bespoke medical care out of pocket and think that, you know, being healthy and having a million plastic surgeries, you know, that that is the right of being, you know, rich and wealthy and successful.

[1:03:41] But, you know, it is ironic there. There are ironies abound because this is an insane situation anyway. We're talking about public health. You know, vaccines require like broad adoption for them to function in the first place. But you know with the Trump administration there's a Stanford study that I throw in chat if we want to share it that you know it's observational early but you know it's like something like a 20 to 30% reduction in dementia symptoms in those who've received this the shingles vaccine. And you know if you don't know what shingles is it's in sort of the herpes family chickenpox family you know of viruses. And it hurts. You get like a bunch of very painful, you know, nerve pain s so sores going up and down either side of your back.

[1:04:33] But yeah, these viruses do seem to sometimes get into the nerve tissue, you know, behind your eye or in the brain. And it may be one of these lur lurking variables in dementia. And you know, with the state of our president, you'd think he might be more supportive, but perhaps it's too late. One of the primary, you know, objectives of the right is to is privatization and to cleave off aspects of the state so you can privatize it and create a new market there. And you know, it's the same thing. It applies to public health. It applies to popular programs, Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, etc., etc. If you do want to cut those agencies or you do want to cut those funding, you have to prime the public by defunding, mismanaging those programs, so as they fall apart, you can then sell it back to them that this is ineffective.

[1:05:24] And so in the case of social security, you have to describe it as a Ponzi scheme. You have to continue with the hysteria that by 2030 2032 or something social security is going to be cut by 20% when the reality is you just need to raise the cap over $184,000. Yeah, fund it. In case anyone doesn't know, person makingund I think it's $184,000 this year pays exactly the same amount into social security as someone making $25 million. It's a regressive tax. So all the hysteria that you see about social security not being at risk of not being funded that could just stroke of a penroke and childcare in New York. Yeah. Disappear overnight.

[1:06:10] And so it's the same thing with all of these other if you want to it this has been a long decades in the making. We want to dismantle the FDA. the perfect way to dismantle the FDA is to put [expletive] in charge of it like RFK or Mccuri or whatever and then just completely mismanagement mismanage it. And so moving forward we the public loses complete faith in the institutions. This is the objective. This is the goal. This is what the right does. They want to dismantle the state and they're doing an incredible job. And I think that you're seeing it very much in health care, in the VA, in you know, in all these things in the cuts with US aid, all of these programs.

[1:06:55] Just to point out some basic history here. I mean this happened almost immediately I mean immediately after the signing of the new deal with FDR you know broad social programs that are some of the you know most successful well wellfunded and beloved programs like social security and nobody likes to see elderly people homeless and begging on the street. Well guess what in the 30s there were plenty of them and this was a program that was designed to address that. And what do you know it works. It provides a floor on human suffering in this country. And you know there was an effort immediately after FDR came along and you know to be clear FDR was preserving capitalism by putting a floor on the human suffering.

[1:07:47] He said look you know if we don't do this the anarchists and the communists are going to you know turn us into the next Russia. and they saw this as a compromise, but that was too much for many of the industrialists of the day, you know, the Prescott Bushes of their time. And Smemedley Butler spoke of the businessman's plot. For those of you who don't know, Smemedley Butler, kind of a legendary weird character, but he wrote a book called War is a Racket. and he basically came to Congress and said I have been recruited by a bunch of people who would like to overthrow the government in you know in response to the new deal.

[1:08:33] So this has been going on for some time. This is why we describe it as a multi-generational project and this is the sort of analysis that you see on the real left all the time. Like this is not the sort of like history or analysis or worldview that you see on on the news. It's not on NPR. You have to read books or, you know, sort of go into some kind of social history or, god forbid, a leftist book bookstore someplace, you know, to or just listen to democracy now. Sure. Or, you know, the growing cornucopia of people who are putting this kind of history on the record, you know. Yeah. If you're interested in Smmedley Butler in particular, Behind the Bastards had a pretty good episode on the business plot.

[1:09:18] Highly recommend that one. The war is a racket. It's not that long. True that. True that. Yeah, people don't read. Nobody reads books anymore. Literacy and book reading rates are absolutely plummeting. We can hope, nor we can hope. But taking it back to the present day alongside this sort of trending of the haunt virus and the dismantling of certain projects through the FDA. Ivormectin is also coming back on the scene as it did with COVID. It seems to be one of these things that just recurs anytime a health scare comes up for these people in like the majere. I've got a couple of tweets that illustrate this. The first one I think is from Tyler Black commenting on the Ivormectton trend coming back from Dr. Mary Tally Bowden who I gather is sort of maybe right-wing Maha medicine influencer.

[1:10:06] Ha virus is an RNA virus and Ivormekin should work against it. Ivormectin blocks RNA viruses from entering the nucleus, inhibits viral replication, disrupts integrity of the viral membrane, and prevents viral replication. Tyler Black, who we've quoted before, says, "You can't make this up. No, Ivvermekin does not treat Haunt virus." If you want to pull up the next one, it's from former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green also commenting on this Mary Tally Bowden tweet saying, "I actually texted her today and asked what we can treat Hauntus with. I'm so glad she posted this. Ivormectin, also vitamin D and zinc. Those of us who refuse to lock down, mask up, and get vax took the good old horse paste and also develop natural immunity.

[1:10:51] So, I wanted to highlight this one because this was just as the HANA virus was trending, what Marjorie Taylor Green was talking about. Around this same time, a bunch of leftist influential figures to some extent were trying to give Marjorie Taylor Green some credit for going out against Trump. You had Ryan Grim from Drop Site trying to give her credit for kind of coming out against Trump. It's like, sure, [laughter] that's fine. credit where credit's due, but also we can't there's a difference between there's a difference between give between being in alignment on a on you know a mutual issue like cracking MAGA or breaking Trump or whatnot and then you know both Jenk and from the Young Turks and Ryan Grim from Drop Site have been I don't even know what they're doing.

[1:11:46] They want to give credit to Marjorie Taylor Green for her position on on Iran. yada she could have voted against it. She could have voted against the war powers law that you know barely passed anyway. She could have there's a good little mini debate that Sam Cedar just did with Ryan Grim addressing Sam. Yeah, Sam Sam kind of called it out. It's a kind of a light-hearted call out though. Yeah. Who's helping who in this situation? Like, you know, are we helping are we really expanding who is hearing an anti- genocide message when we welcome Marjorie Taylor Green into our home to talk about it? or are we basically whitewashing Marjorie Taylor Green who still has a bunch of other odious policy sets?

[1:12:44] No, I feel like it's hard to give credit to her now that her words have like no power for her to like finally actually she had power and she gave it away. She gave it away to save her ass because Trump wasn't going to bless her with a gubernatorial run in Georgia. And I think she also just could once that was out of the way and she didn't have any ladder to climb, she saw MAGA falling apart and the unpopularity and she wanted to save her ass. And that's what these influencers are doing. They're just trying to save their ass. And some people on the left are more than happy to align with that. I think Grimm's position after listening to some of it was essentially like if you can sort of gain her MTG's audience and you can reach them that is worth doing.

[1:13:40] I'm not really opposed to that. If you can reach you know a lot of maggas who you can you know get the votes from them or whatever I'm not necessarily opposed to that. What I'm opposed to is just this laundering. Like Marjorie Taylor Green is a [expletive] lunatic who should have no place in public life. She's dangerous. She's a dangerous fascist. And yeah, like what is the benefit of any She has no power. She's a citizen. She's not in government. I don't what's the point there? Yeah. And I think did I have one more image there from Brett? Brett or Eric Weinstein? I thought I'd give us a little sampling. We had the kind of medicine grifters, we had the political grifters, and now we've got the pseudocientist grifters response to bringing Ivormectton back into the fold.

[1:14:32] He goes, "Brett a long time." When I first saw the haunt virus story, I thought given it's a single stranded RNA virus, ivormectin is very likely to work because Ivormectin is effective with RNA viruses generally. Look at what happened when I pursued it with Claude. It clammed up for safety reasons. And this is like kind of a trend with Brett these days. He's like obsessed with interfacing these AIs and like getting that getting mad at them and how they respond to him. Buckle up. He like I mean this is getting deep into it but you know Brett Brett Weinstein on his podcast with his wife which is really always watch the dark horse they like moved to Portland after you know flaming out in their academic careers but they he talks a lot about these plots that are designed to trick him.

[1:15:34] It's a very weird solidistic universe that he lives in that, you know, he thinks that he's being, you know, targeted. It it's almost like that gangstalking stuff that you see schizophrenia posting about, you know, very strange person. Not a lot of power, you know, to that one. But it's it is interesting as well because the proximity, you know, you have his brother Eric, Eric Weinstein, who's always been Teal's, you know, money man. And the these sort of intellectual dark web people, we don't even use that term anymore. They served their purpose. They've been mostly discarded. you know, their role was to launder right-wing talking points as some kind of classical liberal, you know, push back against political correct wokeness.

[1:16:25] And it's like it's done. Like the Trump people are in the White House again, they whether or not they've shifted the cultural conversation, it's no longer, you know, they don't have to hide anymore. So this sort he's gone into like he's almost entirely van vaccine conspiracies these days, you know. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. And so I think for the sake of time, I do want to broaden the scope here to politics in general, I think I may leave off the Puerto Rican drugs for votes scheme and maybe we can bump that to the next episode we do. I think it's pretty evergreen and it's an interesting one, but it's a little more than I think we have time to get into today.

[1:17:11] And I did want to jump in on the ProPublica story related to veterans who depend on mental health care keep losing their therapists under Trump. This is a story that came out not too long ago. It's a focus that ProPublica has had for some time and I think relates directly to a lot of the conversations we've been having today and over the last couple months as the Trump administration has began discussing mental health and embracing psychedelics. All of these things I think congeal well through this story. So the ProPublica report they discuss the worsening state of mental health care at the VA as the Trump administration has continued. If we want to pull up image one and then image two, I think these are just some stats from the story that I just wanted to bring into the conversation.

[1:17:59] Number one, hundreds of therapists and social workers have left the VA, many of whom have not been replaced since Trump came to office. And then image two has a couple of more stats. Those being mental health is not the only area where the VA has lost medical staff. The agency has eliminated more than 14,000 vacant healthcare positions across the system, according to data first reported by the New York Times. Data published by the VA going back to May 2023 shows that the agency was adding psychologists every quarter until Trump's return to the White House. Then the trend flipped with departures outpacing hires in all four quarters of last year. Compounding the losses, the agency's cohort of social workers, some of whom are licensed therapists who provide mental health counseling, declined by nearly 700 staffers over the year.

[1:18:49] So, I just wanted to bring these stats into the conversation and then some of the experiences that are detailed in this article. So, the first experience we have, this one's from a psychologist at the VA who said, "It was always bad," said one VA psychologist, referring to staffing at a facility in Arizona. And now it's at its breaking point. The therapist described being stretched so thin that schedules replaced some one-on-one sessions with online group sessions that included as many as 35 veterans. The therapist said despite that they were still overloaded with individual sessions and had to limit each one to as little as 16 minutes. The next experience we have is from patient George Rhettz, 26, who left the army in 2022 after serving for four years when he was driving and suddenly caught between immigration agents and protesters.

[1:19:43] Rhetts said the agents broke his car window, pepper-sprayed him, and detained him for days. The incident, which ProPublica detailed in full last fall, left him shaken and exacerbated the PTSD that was first sparked after he faced missile attacks in Iraq. Following his release, Rhettz found himself withdrawing from the world. Quote, "I wasn't texting anyone or talking to anyone, not even my kids." A few weeks after being arrested, Rhettz sought help from the VA clinic in Ventura, California, where staffers told him they'd be in touch for an appointment. But Rhettz said he never heard back even after he called to follow up. His incident with ICE was in July. Rhettz is still waiting. According to data on the VA's website, new patients seeking individual therapy at the Ventura Clinic had to wait an average of two and a half months in early February.

[1:20:32] And then one final experience from this article that I wanted to bring up was another worker from the VA on why she left. Psychologist Mary Brinkmeer started at the VA facility in metropolitan Norfol, Virginia in 2022 after seeing a posting for an LGBTQ care coordinator, which oversees support programs for LGBTQ veterans and helps navigate their care. She quit last February after her superiors began enforcing Trump's anti-diversity orders. Brinkmeer said she was told to stop conducting trainings for physicians and other staff on best practices for caring for LGBTQ patients. Then she said staff members were ordered to remove all LGBTQ paraphernalia from the facility such as rainbow flags, identity affirming literature, and program brochures.

[1:21:18] Also, an edict was issued directing people to use the bathroom of their gender assigned at birth. Brinkmeer said that's when the VA stopped feeling like a welcoming place. Quote, "There was a failure of empathy." She said, "It's sad. It's just sad. I mean, it's more than sad. It's enraging, but I mean this sort of when people talk about, you know, a hostile climate, this is what it is. If people don't feel safe, let alone respected in their workplace, like people quit. They go do something else. You know, nobody wants to, particularly people who are in the healing professions, you know, these people know, you know, what works. They know their clients. They know what their clients need and when they see structural things that are, you know, in contravention of those principles and those practices, many of them have professional and personal ethics that require them to not

[1:22:19] Participate in that sort of thing, you know. So, it's like duh. But I mean I think in the broader sort of sense of some of the things that we talk about in the you know psychedelic right as it were veterans are supposed to be the ones that are you know taken care of and centered because of all of their sacrifice and such and you know this is what it looks like with non- psychedelic mental health care which is I think in part why you know we're talking about this. So thanks for bringing that to our attention. And not only that, what I wanted to bring into this conversation from our neck of the woods is some of the recordings that were from the ISER meeting that was kind of examining the MDMA application. One of the attendees at the ISER meeting on MDMA assisted therapy was Peter Glman, the chair of the medical advisory panel for VA pharmacy benefits management services.

[1:23:12] So the video I'm going to play here is first just emphasizing how veterans have come into the recent conversation on the right around psychedelics. And that's going to cut to the conversation with Peter Glassman during the ISER conversation. Today I'm pleased to announce historic reforms to dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs. In many cases, these experimental treatments have shown life-changing potential for those suffering from severe mental illness and depression, including our cherished veterans. Today's order will ensure that people suffering from debilitating symptoms might finally have a chance to reclaim their lives and lead a happier life.

[1:23:58] You know, just lead a happier life. So, these are the promises being made to veterans. This next video kind of stresses the realities. And also joining us is Pete Glassman who is the chair of the medical advisory panel of the VA pharmacy benefits management services. I've known Pete for a long time. So think of him as the VA. Just think of him as the person who helps the VA figure out what to do with new drugs and he's seen it all. Pete, how long have you been working in that kind of capacity there? Let's see. Since about 96. So what's that? about 20 27 28 years. When we look at the resources that are required or will be required if this gets approved the therapists etc. For example, just take the therapists alone number that will need to get trained that will have to be paid for and those folks will need to undertake that training which is my understanding is it's quite a lot of hours just to train.

[1:24:58] But we also exist in the middle of all these this private healthcare and there's going to be a lot of private health care that's going to want to provide this as well to their patients, maybe to veterans as well. They're going to be grabbing for these therapists as well. They want those therapists to be able to be in there. So, we're going to be, if you will, competing for similar resources, human resources in this case. So, there's the dynamic of equity within the healthare system at large. And then within the VA, of course, there's the issues that were so in a system that's already strained for the workers it needs. the person who helps implement new drugs into the VA is already saying back in 2024 they're going to be struggling to find the staff for this to find the time for training and the money for training for this kind of care.

[1:25:50] It's okay. According to PSFC, we're going to have a million new or 100,000 new mental health psychedelic facilitators in the next what by 2030 or something. Several years. Yeah. Get that. You're working on that. Yeah. I've been seeing these Instagram ads. I saw one. I was going to send it to you guys. I fig I forgot to send it to you guys, but it was like anyone can become a psychedelic therapist for $96 in as little as three days. It's everywhere on Instagram now. Every ad for me is some sort of either recruitment for a psychedelic clinical trial or some [expletive] mind bloom nonsense or psychedelic micro do ammonita mascaria. That's what all of mine are is like, "Hey, do you like Amanita Mascaria?"

[1:26:37] Everybody's taking this. It's just like all maha psychedelic slop. All righty. And I think James is gonna bounce here, but we'll wrap up without him. Good. Thanks for being here, James. The other quote that I wanted to bring in from that IER meeting is how he actually sees psychedelics being implemented with veterans. So, I'm going to pull that video up really quick here. Bear with me. I think I've got it right here. So just do you have any thoughts on how the VA will create its own criteria for who gets started on MDMA? I haven't seen anything yet, but the evidence as you know you took those votes earlier about the level of evidence and the quality of evidence which is let's say dicey marginal at best whereas you have a series of therapies that are far better known. The safety profile is known of these to a far greater extent.

[1:27:34] So from that point of view alone, I think that people would want to go through as Marina just pointed out a the quality therapies before they get to the less known if you will both from an efficacy and a safety point of view. And then finally, as Jar pointed out, the people that were coming into these trials were highly selected. I noticed that as well that the number of people that were chosen for therapy is much smaller than the number of people that were considered eligible or screened which leads me to believe that a lot of the people needed other therapies anyway as a first-line therapy or weren't applicable for this. So I think you're having a both from a practical view and evidentiary point of view long before you even get to the cost infrastructure issue, you have reasons to emphasize well documented and well-known therapies first.

[1:28:26] And so like despite the hype we're hearing from the administration and stuff, these are the kinds of conversations that appear to be happening in the internal structure of places like the VA when they're discussing how to implement these medications. It's not going to be a first-line treatment. It's not going to be easy to staff people for this. It's I think it's really interesting just the way that they are looking at how the sausages made that comment about you know the selectivity of the study. You know the we just have to recall that he's looking at the published research. This is you know circa 2024 just before the you know the FDA made a decision on this. But, you know, this is all of the studies that have been touted as this is the best, you know, revolutionary mental health treatment.

[1:29:17] And he's saying like, look at how many people have been interviewed and how many of them reject were rejected versus how many got in. And that is an indication that this isn't just some like wide openen door where, you know, any person who has a qualifying condition walks in. It's is pointing to the fact that they disqualified many people before they included them in their study to get the numbers that are then touted as you know as this mental health cure. Was it representative Koreah was was out there talking California talking about how this is a mind cure. Every day in America 20 to 40 veterans take their own lives because of PTSD.

[1:30:05] What we want to do is save veterans, make sure that they're healed from those invisible wounds that they bring back from the battlefield. And this Iba psychedelics promises to be that magic cure that fixes not only mental health, PTSD, but alcoholism, drug addiction, and a host of other things, maybe Alzheimer's as well. And is it only from your perspective, Congressman, applicable to veterans with traumatic brain injuries or PTSD? Or could it be also for civilians traumatized by other things like mass shootings or car accidents and the like? Absolutely. This promises to revolutionize the way we address mental health in our society.

[1:30:51] It's I mean, it's a huge scandal. It's fraud is what it is. And it's fraud that is being, you know, perpetrated on a definitionally traumatized group of people. Like it's promising false hope, you know, or unverified hope at best to people who do deserve good treatments and it's wasting people's times. How many people have been, you know, paying thousands of dollars out of pocket, you know, for some, you know, maps? I guess they should have waited for the you know n$96 Instagram certification you know but like these people who are getting certified in therapeutic modalities that you know at this point probably won't be you know a part of any kind of protocol like the it's just not it's not a robust evidence-based effect like psychedelics as a medical intervention have not met the standard you know that's why you have to go through the executive order process like you know science in general is not supposed to be rule by

[1:31:54] Edict kind of thing. It's you bring the evidence, you make the argument and public health says we rate weigh the risks and benefits and in some cases the costs and it's just they are going to these other alternate routes because they are so missionoriented because they are so they're such zots, you know. All right, and that's going to wrap up today's news roundup. If you're interested in this content, you want to see more, give us a like, subscribe, check us out on Patreon. Thanks for watching.